History and Fun: Oil and Water?

My memories from history class have little to do with history. Far more than the King-Byng Crisis or responsible government, what stands out is my grade 10 teacher’s vigorous pacing and his rock-hard gel hairdo. He seemed unable to stay in one place for more than a moment. As a class, we were like the audience of a tennis match, our eyes going back and forth as we followed our tennis-ball teacher.

History class is a hard sell to the present generation of students, and it’s not hard to see why. Traditional approaches rely heavily on memorization of facts and dates, both of which are instantly available to anyone with a smart phone these days. What format would make Canadian history engaging? Well, today I want to share just one answer from an unlikely source: board games.

My wife and I love board games. One of our favorite dates is to go out to a café called “Snakes and Lattes” – Toronto’s first board game café. It’s a wonderful place, and I urge you to go there immediately. During our visit yesterday, we discovered a game which re-enacts the contest for North America. “A Few Acres of Snow,”(1) as it is called, places you and your opponent in command of the Thirteen Colonies and New France. As it won a prestigious Golden Geek award in 2011, I had high expectations.

We sat down at our table and eagerly opened the box. I asked one of the helpful staff to teach us the rules, but he said “Ooh, sorry... It’s a real niche game. There’s a small group of people who love it, but I’ve only played it once.” Not discouraged, we opened up the manual and began to unravel the rules of play. About two hours later, my voice was hoarse from reading 12 pages of rules, and Jess had a look of despair and protest on her face.

The rules were complicated because, well, running a colony is complicated. On any given turn, you can choose from 21 actions, including different types of expansion, attack, and money-making. It was tough going for us unseasoned n00bs to learn the game, but its complexity is also its strength. The game leads you to see the economics of scarcity and choice in the history of the colonies. The different strategies in the game are analogies of the real choices that were available to the British and French. Of course, playing a board game is not the same as learning the real story, but is has the effect of making the real story more interesting. The game shows that our history came from choices – things didn’t have to turn out this way, as there were countless other choices available to those with power. Add to that innumerable contingencies and chance events, and our history is transformed from a bore into a tense drama.

(1) The name came from a quote of Voltaire, who dismissed the loss Quebec in 1759 as just "a few acres of snow."
All photos taken from: http://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/79828/a-few-acres-of-snow

Winter in the Prairies

Last month, I was walking through Seneca College when I stumbled across the motherload – library clearance sale! I had to sift through piles of deadwood, but my persistence was rewarded. I came away with an anthology titled The Prairie Experience and a very promising Canadian historical atlas. Being an Ontarian, I was surprised and delighted to learn that Canada has provinces west of Manitoba (which the atlas confirmed), and they even have a unique literature of their own. Boldly, I steered the birchbark canoe into uncharted waters.

The anthology was a rewarding read. It includes poetry, short fiction, memoirs, and a one-act play, all written by prairie authors. Central in their writing is the landscape, fruitful at times but more often harsh and uncompromising. I want to share one poem that captures the mood:

PRAIRIE IMPRESSION

By Margot Osborn

The world is a silver penny

Impossibly large

And I am in the middle of it,

A penny reaching from rim to dull grey rim of sky

That curves above my head, a lustreless bowl.

There is nothing but the snow and I.

The snow in shadowed hummocks is its superscription

But I cannot read the language nor make out the design.

I am alone in this white desolation.

Though I move, it travels with me,

Featureless,

And still I remain in the middle. (1)

Saskatchewan in Winter, outside Prince Albert.

I like how the author begins by casting the prairie as a silver penny. A penny is as flat as can be, and it’s not worth a whole lot. In 1971, around the time that this poem was written, the average Saskatchewan farmer made a net profit of $4,616. As the speaker surveys her surroundings, the snow covers any variety in the “Featureless” landscape. Even the “dull grey” sky offers no landmark. I had to look up “hummocks” – it’s a small hill, or a mound. In this case, I gather that it would be a snow drift, casting a shadow on the ground before it. The line “I cannot read the language” is interesting. I think it speaks of the expectation to see traces of design in nature: order, harmony, balance, beauty, &c. But the design in this prairie landscape is either buried under the snow, or it is absent altogether. I think the second interpretation is supported by the following line, as speaker calls the plain a “white desolation.” I love the image of the speaker traveling, yet always in the middle. The lasting impression of this poem is that the prairie landscape is as vast as it is bare, and the speaker finds herself, in the words of another poet, “Alone, alone, all, all alone, Alone on a wide wide sea.”(2)

Sources:

(1) Terry Angus, Ed. The Prairie Experience. Toronto: The Macmillan Company of Canada Ltd., 1975.

(2) "The Rime of the Ancient Mariner" by S.T. Coleridge